A Curious, Alternative Magazine

You said something – PJ Harvey

This waltzing photograph of a song is hard to resist. Listening to it you’re brought in front of a scene pregnant with possibilities, and left to your own devices to make sense of it.

The setting is ‘a rooftop in Brooklyn, at one in the morning’. Everything is seen through this frame or filter. Brooklyn is one of those magical locations that has a weight to it that, for example, Swindon will never have. It’s not Manhattan and it is New York.

It’s one in the morning – perfectly legitimate, given that it’s the city that never sleeps, but it also gives the suggestion of the illicit, that this meeting may not be one to have in the light of day.

And what’s taking place at one in the morning? It’s up to you to paint the picture, as we’re never told. The subject to whom PJ is singing ‘said something, really important’ – but we never find out who it is, or what was said. Ambiguity reigns.